We are trying to de-clutter.
We think that we are on the cusp of another change in our lives, this one being when Oliver buzzes off to serve the dear old King in a couple of months, and we are contemplating this step into our dotage with excited anticipation.
We have been contemplating all sorts of exciting possibilities for this new life. Not least it has occurred to us that we could sell our house and purchase a smaller one, preferably with a very great deal of space around it. Mark wants a workshop and I want a horse, and we are in agreement that what we would like best is a bungalow about the size of a large garden shed, with a field, a garden and a massive workshop.
We have been considering this with some hopefulness for a month or two, but finally, with some reluctance, we have shelved the project.
This is partly because we just like living in Windermere, and partly because the children have protested that if we go and live in a shed there will be nowhere for Father Christmas to find them in December, and partly because we are going to have to continue earning a living for some time to come, and taxi driving is not a very portable career.
Hence we thought that what we would do instead is try and make our house a tidily happy place to begin our extreme old age.
There is not room for a horse in the garden, although we could contemplate installing one in our field.
The house is tiresomely full of the detritus of having had lots of ideas and ambitions. It has an attic stuffed with ancient PlayStation games and other boy-remnants, including a drum kit. It has a conservatory which we had intended to nurture into a tropical jungle, and which has now become a tropical jungle, with lush tropical greenery obstructing the doors and most of the windows. Also it has a back yard overflowing with yet more plants and firewood and piles and piles of junk that Mark erroneously thought might come in useful for some unspecified future emergency.
I do not know why he anticipated needing a bucket full of snooker balls. I have told him they must go to the tip.
There are piles of wood which has not become firewood due to its potential shelfy usefulness, stacked drily in the auxiliary shed beside the full-of-junk shed.
We started clearing it out and discovered an almost-forgotten lavatory at the back of the shed.
The plumbing is already installed for it. It had just become buried underneath other projects.
Mark says that he will finish plumbing it in. It will be very useful for emptying the camper van loo, when the glorious day comes when we finish the camper van and trundle off into the rosily triumphant sunset.
Actually, when we trundle back out of the sunset really, because of course the loo will not need emptying before we go.
I am not anticipating that day for some time yet.
I left him contemplating waste pipes and went up to the attic, where I despaired quietly.
Everybody has been using it as a glory-hole for things with no place for quite some time. There was Oliver’s expedition kit from school, boiler suits and gloves from various oil rigs, about a hundred towels I had been saving for making into moss archways, the suitcases that I don’t like and the suitcases that I do like, dozens of books and hat boxes and shoe boxes and coat hangers and as much clutter as if it had been the prop store for an enthusiastic amateur theatre company which had just finished its run of Dear Octopus and was about to make an attempt at Lysistrata.
There are all sorts of things that might come in useful sooner or later, especially if I really was an amateur theatre company, and indeed, quite a few that would be very useful now, if only I was not too busy tidying up to get on with more exciting creative projects.
I did not throw anything away.
I don’t think we had better consider a smaller house in any kind of hurry.
